Effect of complex training on carbon monoxide, cardiorespiratory function, and body mass among college students at the initial stage of stopping smoking.
Seungsuk Kim
PMID 28878451WHAT IT FOUND
During 12 weeks of not smoking, male students doing 30-minute aerobic plus weight training five times weekly had lower exhaled carbon monoxide, higher treadmill fitness, less body fat, and more muscle than controls.
Key findings
01Compared with no training, 12 weeks of combined aerobic and resistance training while not smoking was associated with significant group-by-time differences in exhaled carbon monoxide, VO2max, HRmax, VEmax, body fat, skeletal muscle mass, and waist:hip ratio.
02Exhaled carbon monoxide fell from 18.6 ppm to 0.3 ppm in the training group and from 17.3 ppm to 0.5 ppm in the control group.
03In the training group, VO2max rose from 38.8 to 43 ml/kg/min, body fat fell from 26.8% to 19.6%, and skeletal muscle mass rose from 32.5 to 35.9 kg.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTs
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What it does not show
Only 40 male college students were studied, so the results may not apply to women, older adults, people with respiratory disease, or people with different smoking histories. All participants were required to be nonsmoking for 12 weeks, and carbon monoxide also fell in the control group, so the study cannot show that exercise alone clears carbon monoxide without cessation. The training program combined aerobic and resistance exercise, so the effect of either component alone cannot be separated. The paper does not report dropouts, allocation concealment, or blinding, which makes the randomized comparison harder to assess. The follow-up was only 12 weeks, and the study did not test long-term smoking relapse, cardiovascular events, or lung disease outcomes. The analysis mentions waist:hip ratio, but the supplied table does not report its values, so that outcome cannot be checked.
Declared interests
No funding or conflict of interest statement is reported in the supplied text.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that complex training makes people stop smoking. All participants were required to be nonsmoking for 12 weeks, and the control group also had low post-training carbon monoxide. The study only shows that adding combined aerobic and resistance training to a cessation period was associated with greater changes than no training, and it cannot separate the aerobic and resistance components.